Canon Pixma MP245

Full Review

Canon has gone easy on the goodies while giving the MP245 good image quality and the result is a well priced MFD. The MRP tag on the MP245 is lesser than the two HPs and the Epson, and it omits an LCD display, media card readers, has only one tray. Pictbridge is included however. When it comes to print quality, the Pixma Mp245 produced the best black levels – we were able to make out 20 out of 21 shades between white and black in our grayscale test image. Also, in our text printouts, the output from the MP245 looked the ‘blackest’ and contrasted well against the paper’s white. The driver has umpteen options for customizing the color output – from setting individual CMYK levels to overall brightness, saturation and color tone. The only missing option (which the HPs and the Epson have) is the option of using only black ink (when you want to conserve color inks). Text printing speed (A4 paper filled with black text) was 6.2 ppm in normal mode and in draft mode it saw an increment to 8ppm (slow for a draft / fast mode). The quality in draft mode was however the best when compared to draft / fast mode of other MFDs in our Top 5. This also means ink savings are likely to be the least in the MP245’s case. Scanning and copying quality gave us no chances to fret about, but speeds were slow – the MP245 took all of 81 seconds for a color copy and 67 seconds for a black and white copy. At just a little over Rs.4.50 per page (black ink usage only), the Pixma MP245 has the same running cost as the two HPs (but higher than the Epson Stylus TX400), but it cheaper to purchase by over Rs.1,000, making it a strong contender in our Top 5 charts.

Canon has gone easy on the goodies while giving the MP245 good image quality and the result is a well priced MFD.

Bottom Line

This reasonably fast MFD poses no problems in printing text, photo prints showed a pinkish tinge, but otherwise had no issues. Driver provides fine controls to adjust color levels, so this must be easy to correct.